


Liberosis

by Be_Right_Back



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: (it doesn't in canon either but hey), Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst, Attachment does not equal love in this fic, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, It's Hard and Nobody Understands, Jedi Culture, Jedi Culture Respected, anakin has FEELINGS, how did Palpatine die?, who cares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:48:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25227799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Be_Right_Back/pseuds/Be_Right_Back
Summary: The war is over, the Sith are gone, and there is now Anakin Skywalker's secret marriage to deal with. While love is a wonderful thing, some truths are hard to face, and letting go is the destiny of all Jedi.Or: the Council and Anakin clash. It doesn't go as terribly as it could have.
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Mace Windu, Anakin Skywalker & Yoda, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, The Jedi Council & Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 87
Kudos: 548
Collections: Jedi-Friendly, Mace Windu Fandom Safe Space





	Liberosis

**Author's Note:**

> The configuration of the Council is lifted straight from RotS. Anakin's temporary seat was given back to Depa. Don't worry, Caleb is fine - I ignored the rule established in _Master and Apprentice_ stating that you can't have a Padawan while on the Council, as it's not from the movies or TCW.

“You can’t be serious,” Skywalker ground out, spinning on his heels, eyes burning with the dark fire he never seemed able to temper.

The Council chamber was not _designed_ to put people at a disadvantage, per say, but it was the inevitable side-effect of having a circular room. The seats were arranged in a way meant to facilitate discussion between the Councillors, who were all facing one another. That also put the person summoned in the most awkward spot, right in the centre and unable to escape the scrutiny of the Masters. Skywalker had always hated the vulnerability that came with it and the humility it was meant to foster.

The boy could have definitely used a little humility right now, Mace reflected. Not that he would ever find some in himself without Obi-Wan there.

Mace kept his irritation in check and met Anakin’s gaze evenly, determined to meet unstoppable anger with immovable patience.

“We are,” he said succinctly – too coolly, perhaps.

Plo sighed through his mask. Mace leaned back in his seat, mindful of his fellow Master’s warning. The Force rippled around Shaak Ti, a pond where a pebble had been thrown, forcing Anakin’s attention onto her instead of Mace. She steepled her fingers together and looked at the young man earnestly, with the gentleness of a mother.

For reasons obvious to all, Skywalker had less issues with the female members of the Council. This time, however, it probably wouldn’t be enough.

“Anakin,” she said softly, “what else would you have us do?”

Her heart bled for this indomitable, proud Knight who wanted to hold the stars in his palm and keep the world safe, too stubborn to understand he would only succeed in burning himself. Most of them had been like him, lifetimes ago, and wisdom, age and loss had worn away their folly and taught them all that the universe would bend for no one.

Shaak could see his hurt, his defiance. How he was rejecting their teachings and bucking under what he believed to be a yoke when it was a guiding staff. The path of a Jedi was not meant for all, this they had known for centuries. But for Anakin, they’d believed, they’d hoped—

It didn’t matter now.

“ _Do?_ ” Anakin seethed. “How about not casting me off like I’m waste material? I’m a Knight of this Order! I was your best General! I helped you end the war! You don’t get to throw me away the second I’m not useful to you.”

Yoda’s ears drooped briefly, but his gaze never wavered. His deep grief imbued the Force like cold water from a well, bottomless. Stass Allie’s eyes misted over.

“Measure our Knights’ _usefulness_ , we do not,” Yoda said, voice like stone. “Care for a Jedi because of his _might,_ we do not. Skills, great deeds, irrelevant they are.”

“We are not casting you off,” Depa reminded Skywalker. Like Mace, she remained unreadable, distant and firm when she knew comforting words would not be accepted. “We are giving you a choice.”

“ _What kind of a choice is that?!”_ Anakin exploded.

“Walk the path of a Jedi, or walk your own,” Saesee said simply.

Kit nodded. “There is no shame in either.”

Anakin ignored them, facing Mace, something almost like rage in eyes that had turned ice blue. Mace wasn’t impressed. Rage and anger and pride, he’d wrestled with every day of his life. For decades now, he’d been winning. A boy a thousand small decisions away from mastering himself would not drag him to his level.

“I won’t just go,” Anakin said. “I know you’ve been waiting for years to kick me out – I won’t let you. I won’t be dismissed like Ahsoka.”

Plo’s heartache shattered the stillness of his presence in the Force. Shame and pain swelled and were quelled. Agen, Depa, Stass and Coleman hadn’t been on the Council at the time of Ahsoka Tano’s forsaking. They embraced their friends’ regret as their own and then straightened, chins lifted high.

“We are not discussing the Council’s previous decisions,” Agen said. “We are discussing your situation.”

“We are not _kicking you out_ ,” Depa repeated.

Someone’s sorrowful condemnation murmured to everyone’s soul.

_You could never accept sacrifice._

The thought wafted in the Force, unbidden. Skywalker caught it, when he had previously been deaf and blind to any emotion but his own. He gritted his teeth.

“You demand that I choose between my life here and my _wife_. How is that _fair_? How can you expect me to— to— Ugh!” He threw his arms up, turned to face each Master after the other. “You don’t even understand what you want me to give up.”

Disbelief rose, unrestrained, and they all exchanged looks when the Force itself wasn’t enough to convey their incredulity.

“We want you to choose between a commitment to your wife and a commitment to this Order,” Agen corrected coldly, something like steel in his usually warm brown eyes. “You knew the rules when you decided to break them. As you yourself said, you are a Knight, not a child to be coddled.”

Several Masters inwardly winced, their faces betraying nothing. Anakin was so young, barely a man when they all remembered the scrappy desert imp with a mop of blond hair and an attitude Obi-Wan Kenobi himself had been unable to curb. The verbal slap stung. Still, they all believed in truth, in care expressed through honest teachings about the reality of things.

Soothing, convenient lies had been the Sith’s poison, their greatest tool in a galaxy of wilfully blind individuals. No more.

“You speak of fairness,” Stass said softly. Anakin whipped around to glare at her, but he wilted when he met her eyes. Deep blue with purple reflections, framed by the softest, kindest face ever seen on this Council – looking into them felt like looking into the Force itself. “Surely you must see that we cannot allow you to remain a married Knight and act fairly”

When Anakin opened his mouth to protest, Depa raised a hand in stern warning. He let Stass continue.

“To be a Jedi is to accept that you must be ready to give up everything for a higher duty. Your belongings, your friendships, your identity, your life – you cannot hold any of these things above the helpless, the common people, the ones who never swore to live their lives selflessly. We sacrifice so they don’t have to, Skywalker,” she reminded him, as though teaching to a youngling. He had learned this already, and discarded it. “When you married Senator Amidala, you swore to put _her_ above everything else. The two pledges you made are incompatible. Stay with us while a husband, and it’s unfair to your wife, to her rights and needs. Stay with her while a Jedi, and it’s unfair to the Order and to anyone who might call on you for help.”

“I managed this far,” Anakin protested, something like desperation in his voice. The righteous anger was stronger.

“But you were hiding, which you can no longer do,” Plo said back. “The Senate will not tolerate a relationship that cast doubt upon both the Order’s neutrality and Senator Amidala’s integrity, even now that the war is over.”

“And you two are about to have a child,” Coleman pointed out. “A child that you would have to raise, which you can’t do three days at the time between months-long missions.”

“And even disregarding all of this, having _managed_ this far wouldn’t change the fact that you must choose,” Ki-Adi said. “If we allowed you not to, then it would be unfair to any other Knight in love and unable to ‘manage.’ We cannot shake the foundations of our Order to cater to one person’s wishes. It has never been our way.”

“Maybe your way is wrong!”

“Maybe it is for you,” Mace agreed. “But if it is, why are you so intent on staying a Jedi?”

Skywalker closed his mouth with a snap, hurt and confusion bleeding into the Force. He wasn’t, they all knew. He would leave them, that much they had seen before he even entered – perhaps seething, perhaps finally at peace with the destiny he could make for himself. Plo tilted his head, broadcasting the warmth and care he knew Humans associated with their smiles. It was a bit pained and full of sorrow, but it did reach Anakin.

“You don’t get it,” the young man resisted one more time, so stubborn and so lost. “This— This isn’t about me. You people just _don’t understand_.”

There was a long silence, fraught with outrage carefully controlled and disdain aptly quelled. Plo, Kit, Ki-Adi and Shaak were astonished, shocked to the core by Anakin’s opinion of them. He knew them. He’d fought beside them, laughed at their jokes, smiled at them, smiled _with_ them. He was Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Padawan, the student of their friend.

And he condemned them so.

Yoda’s mouth thinned.

“Speak of love, do you?” The ancient Master said, the echo of his voice powerful enough to make any soul tremble.

Anakin nodded. He swallowed, too.

“Assume, you do, that love we understand not,” Yoda summarized.

Anakin found the strength to nod again, somehow. Foolish boy.

“Old, I am,” Yoda said, supremely calm. “Old enough to be your Master’ Masters, we all are. A youngling in the Force, and a youngling to us, are you. _Masters_ we did not become by sacrificing nothing, by loving nothing. Let go, we had to, many times. Compassion, we would know not, if love we did not. Teach, we would not, if a mystery love was. _Sith_ , without love we would be, dry and full of hate.”

Memories of Dooku cried in the Force, broken. Grief from Ahsoka’s departure, sharp. Images of a sleeping Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon’s robe draped over his shoulder by an older, wizened hand. Hundreds of tiny younglings, lulled to sleep by the songs of their Creche Masters.

On Geonosis, Depa was cradling the broken corpse of her sister Sar. In a medical bay, Stass was tending to Adi’s dead body, her fellow Healers mourning with her the death of her cousin. In Grievous’ lair, Kit was collapsing under the grief of Nahdar’s death. On yet another battlefield, Ki-Adi was closing the eyes of his Commander and laying him to rest.

Anakin had bowed his head. Coruscant’s sun shone in his eyes, reflected by the unshed tears collecting there.

“I— It’s not the same,” he mumbled. “It’s not—”

“—like being in love?” Saesee completed. He smiled ever so slightly, the Force rippling with light amusement. “Most of us were already adults before your birth. There isn’t much that you have experienced that we haven’t.”

Skywalker’s eyes widened as he caught on to what Saesee was implying. Mouth agape, he blushed like a teenager while the Councillors’ inner laughter chased away the sorrow. Childish horror and revulsion exploded into the Force because of some image the boy was careful not to share, and the Masters rolled their eyes.

“You—” Skywalker sputtered. “I—”

He fell silent, red and baffled and obstinately clinging to the idea that they did not get it. Then his head snapped up, something like triumph in his gaze.

“What about Obi-Wan and Duchess Satine? You never made them choose.”

“They weren’t married,” Kit said reprovingly. “They weren’t even together.”

“Because they _made themselves_ choose, and they chose duty,” Plo added.

There was a pause, and a sigh.

“It’s not that we don’t care, Skywalker,” Depa said at length. “It’s _because_ we care that we cannot let this go on. We care about _you_.”

_Do you?_

The feeling was less harsh than earlier. The boy’s walls were crashing down, eroded by the thought of a life with his wife and children, a life free of the responsibilities of a peacekeeper. They could see him laying down a bloodstained saber – and where had all that blood come from, for the Force to cry out so? – and rising. He was loosening his metal fingers, letting go of the crushing grip he’d had on his own life, stepping out of this valley of fear and doubt he’d lived in for years now.

Bitterness shadowed his soul still, bitterness at them, at himself, at himself for hating them – but healing fluttered to life, like broken white wings springing from a heart of kyber and finally, _finally_ taking flight.

The path of a Jedi was not meant for everyone.

The path of the Light was.

Anakin Skywalker took a deep breath – anger billowing, incomprehension still there, resentment. He let it go, slowly, painfully.

“I choose my wife,” he said firmly.

They nodded.

“Your lightsaber, please,” Mace said, palm open.

Skywalker dropped his saber there and left, his gait lighter, his shoulders less tense. He hadn’t bowed, hadn’t shown respect. He hadn’t said goodbye. He hadn’t acknowledged any of the million unsaid things between them all. The Chosen One was lost to them, and they doubted he'd come visit anytime soon. Some of them sighed and some smiled, and there was fatigue and muted pride in the Force, everything bittersweet.

A holo was flipped on and Obi-Wan's image flickered to life in his seat. He looked weary.

“I assume the meeting is over?” 

Shaak nodded. 

“It went well enough, considering.” 

“Choose to leave, he did," Yoda supplied.

Obi-Wan sighed, but a small smile tugged at his lips.

“Thank you for making me sit this one out,” their youngest said. “I'll talk to him later. I'm sure he's not too happy with any of us right now.” 

“He'll get over it,” Mace said with certainty. 

Obi-Wan brightened slightly at the reassurance, and they moved on to other topics. 

After all, they _all_ had to let go.

**Author's Note:**

>  **liberosis**  
>  _n._ the desire to care less about things—to loosen your grip on your life, to stop glancing behind you every few steps, afraid that someone will snatch it from you before you reach the end zone—rather to hold your life loosely and playfully, like a volleyball, keeping it in the air, with only quick fleeting interventions, bouncing freely in the hands of trusted friends, always in play.
> 
> From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.


End file.
